AVFM has a nice little banner on their front page
First, let me remark on how misogynist it is to put this on a men’s rights site where the readership is mostly male. I find it as a warning to women who visit the site that there are rapists among MRA’s and this is how to prevent getting raped by one of them. However true that is we also must remember why Paul Elam would put such ‘advice’ on his site. It’s there because MRA’s blame women for being raped. This is also another bombastic attempt for attention, which it will get.
The rape prevention advice comes from a military man with a Youtube channel called Orthrus. He has a few videos dealing with this subject. I sat down and watched them. From the outset Orthrus compares being raped to women being in a minefield. I found that metaphor quite telling.
A minefield is something unknowable to anyone walking through it. There is no way to really tell which step is going to be the one that kills you. I think it’s a great metaphor. We women can’t know which men are rapists and which men are not. Sorta gives credence to the fear we feel trying to live our lives. ‘All men are potential rapists’ fits the metaphor of the minefield.
When MRA’s cry about rape prevention posters, claiming it’s not fair that women see all men as potential rapists, they simultaneously promote this idea on their website. Why are they whining when they are telling us clearly that women must fear all men as women must navigate the unknowable minefield?
Orthrus tells women that we are responsible for being in that minefield and then wonders why women see his ‘advice’ as victim blaming. Women know that if they’re raped people will ask them ‘well, did you do this? or this?’
Where are the rapists?
Orthus says young girls don’t understand the psychology of rapists or what to look for and that women can see it coming. He also doesn’t seem to understand that people lose their ability to consent when they are incapacitated and uses a typical MRA analogy of a woman purchasing items while incapacitated as being ok so why can’t a man rape her too? He’s angry about rape culture and being called a rape apologist. Then he goes on to say he might be a little sociopathic because he has no sympathy for victims of crime. AVFM is batting 1000 on this guy. Rape destroys everything about society, he concludes, and rapists are animals who he wants to kill and yet somehow women should be able to stop them.
In his video titled ‘The Psychology of a Rapist’ he starts by saying he’s not a rapist because he has a conscience and admonishes us women that we shouldn’t assume any guy can rape us. How does this work when we’re in a minefield? How can we see underneath that soil to see that mine so we don’t step on it? Rapists are narcissists and entitled he says, and most men aren’t like that. When you tell girls any man is potential rapist, he claims, they can’t focus on who the real rapists are, which he says are rude douchebags. You look for the assholes who are rude. ‘Don’t hang out with assholes.’
It’s so simple right?
The next video, ‘Don’t Walk Right Into It,’ he divides acquaintance rape into date rape and asshole acquaintance rape. AAR’s touch women’s bodies in public and laugh at women when they complain. AAR’s do not respect personal space of women and you shouldn’t confront them alone. You can’t tell him he’s a piece of shit after work. You can’t slap him because that’s ineffective violence and women use that too much and get beaten down afterward. He wants what he wants and he’ll do anything to get it, especially when alcohol is involved. Does this sound utterly ridiculous to you ladies? This guy seems to think this is how rape happens!
I have a feeling Orthus hasn’t ever experienced being a woman nor a woman being raped, not by the asshole acquaintance but by the guy who never gives off a single sign he’s going to rape you. ‘Women think they’re independent and can do whatever they want,’ he says.
He addresses date rape in the next video titled ‘Date Rape and the Bonding Process’ which is 20 minutes long. High risk behaviour is the fault of women. Yes, ladies. It’s our fault. Young girls going to parties with drinking is women’s fault. One of the men at this party is a psychopath and the rest of the men are idiots who drink and then rape, he explains. This is where we know all men are potential rapists and we women are correct in this thinking because we know regular men will rape. We have no way of knowing which man is the rapist. Get this, he says he’s insulted as a man because women shouldn’t treat all men as potential rapists!
Ladies, I think we see where this is going. It’s our fault for drinking with men and it’s our fault for assuming that any man can be a rapist. It’s a no win situation for us, as if we didn’t already fucking know that. We know that in every rape women will be blamed. That’s rape culture. This dude just doesn’t seem to understand that but he promoting it.
The bonding process of date rape is important he says.
He uses a ‘combat environment’ scenario to describe how women need to be alert to rape. I think that’s an apt analogy because women are always on alert around men but of course this same man is offended by that because most men are good men, like him. He describes a typical teenage scenario where a girl hangs out at her boyfriends house. He instructs her not to ‘encourage him’ sexually because if she does he won’t be able to understand the word ‘no.’ See where this is going? This, to him, is the bonding process where teenage girls get close to their rapist, even though they don’t know if he’s a rapist, she’ll soon find out that he doesn’t take no for an answer and she sat on the bed next to him which was a wrong move.
This is a minefield for sure. Women and girls are in combat 24/7. This is the way we live. He sees that but insists we can somehow see a rapist a mile away and he’s not sympathetic to us because it’s on women to figure this out in his crazy fucktarded scenarios.
In his final video ‘Conclusions’, he says he’s done it all for us. Now we women know how to avoid being raped but of course the disclaimer is there that ‘sometimes we can’t avoid it’ and ‘these are complicated issues.’ That should’ve been the whole video in 30 seconds. Women don’t know which men are rapists. Regular guys can be rapists. We women are in a minefield. We live in combat situations.
Imagine if all women could carry and men could not? I can imagine that world. I can imagine just being able to shoot and ask questions later.
Men can stop rape, if they want to, but they don’t want to.
Orthrus is a dummy. Elam is a dummy. All MRA’s are dumb.
This post was accidentally posted earlier than intended. If you saw it a couple days ago, that’s why.
Mancheeze 
Well, they’re right when they say that all men are potential rapists. The worst ones are usually the ones you’d least suspect, too – not the assholes who give signals, although those are dangerous, too.
Listen to MRAs when they talk about themselves and men, in general, because about this they know best. All men are potential rapists. Any man may rape a girl or woman at any second, whether he’s known or unknown to her, whether he is married, unmarried, has daughters of his own or not, is her uncle, her brother, etc. Men rape. That’s all you need to know, really.
Too bad this isn’t taught to girls in school at a very young age, so more of us could have a chance of survival.
The combat analogy is very apt. I don’t even think it’s an analogy – this IS a war zone and I’ve been through things no combat veteran can imagine at the hands of men in my own country during a time of no declared civil war.
I just clicked one of the dudebro’s video links. Apparently, he agrees with me. A “dangerous situation” is any one in which there is a man present.
Listen to your enemy when he speaks. When he tells you he is a danger to you, don’t brush it off because he really means it.
Also, in the video: If a man claims to be offering you assistance and you accept it, you are “asking for it.”
Men keep telling us all the different ways in which we are “asking for it.” So, this is what they believe to be true.
The dudebro starts out saying he doesn’t really understand date rape, then goes on to discuss it as if he’s an authority on the subject. When you go out on a date with a man and he, for instance, grabs you from behind and rapes you while you’re admiring a picture on the wall or, for example, drives you to a remote location, holds you captive and rapes you, this is date rape. According, to this dudebro, women’s actions cause these men to be violent toward them. (Rape is, very often, pre-meditated, especially in the two examples I just gave.)
HMQ, how do you listen to this stuff without loads of chardonnay on hand??? I think I’m going to have to go have a big swig right now, myself.
The first paragraph of your post lays out why this is posted on AVFM. All very true. If an article about rape had been posted anywhere else limiting rape to women, AVFM would have been raging about it ignoring male rape.
Orthrus is right about the minefield as you say.
He seems to me to be ignoring the collective social pressures that put girls and women in harm’s way and putting it on individuals.
Am I missing something? I didn’t watch all the videos. He also seems to be ignoring male rape and prison rape, which have to do with structural societal problems. He seems to be ignoring marital rape, incest, pedophilic rape as with the Catholic church, rape of prostituted women, the impact of drug addiction (another societal problem), the impact of racial discrimination in society, the rape of pornography performers and child victims, war rape, sexual harassment in the workplace rape, child bride rape, sex slavery, and so on.
His sole concern seems to be the only kind of rape these guys talk about – the rape they like to talk about, namely the rape of young women in compromising situations, especially hook-up culture rape. It’s the Bad Hookup with its eroticized overtones for them. They don’t ever talk about 80-year old women in villages in war-torn countries being raped then murdered. (I will qualify that by saying I have seen an article or two about how bad rape of boys is in Afghanistan, though the goal of such articles always seems to end up being not to help them but to show that rapes of girls in foreign countries get more attention).
To minimize the limited kind of rape he’s talking about:
1. Girls and women should be taught to avoid situations when they are alone with boys and men and to use care when it is necessary (this does not mean they should be taught to avoid public places such as night streets, where they have a right to be and should go as desired, this means they should not get into a private enclosed space where they have no easy way out).
2. Co-ed Universities should provide safe, non-coed housing for women.
3. Drinking on campuses, including off-campus facilities like frat houses, should be banned. Use of alcohol and drugs on “dates” should be socially stigmatized as unsafe for many reasons.
4. Societies should take an objective look at its promotion of objectification of women, hook-up culture, and social pressure on girls to have sex, and discourage all that.
5. Girls should be taught martial arts early on and offered free self-defense gun training if desired over the age of 18
6. Sex-segregated colleges and primary schools should be encouraged, with due assurance that the women’s schools are not treated as second-class in any way.
7. Boys and girls should have sex-education classes that include frank discussions of all kinds of rape, and the social stigma of reporting rape should be discussed openly, with the object of removing that stigma completely.
8. Affirmative consent laws like California’s should be adopted globally.
9. MRAs should stop minimizing and excusing date rape. Date rape is rape. It is a product of a hook-up culture that systematically does deprive girls and women of their agency using societal mores and controls.
9. In fairness, the current federal push to force colleges to handle the investigation and enforcement of a crime like rape in-house is a well-intentioned mistake for several reasons. Campus rape allegations should be reported to the police and the legal and LE aspects handled by them. Colleges should retain the discretion to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to suspend a student who has been accused of rape, and should promptly expel any student convicted of a sex crime. Names of the accused prior to conviction should not be disclosed by officials except in unusual circumstances. Every school should have procedures in place to protect and support students who report rapes.
These are just a few personal thoughts for obvious fixes of a limited class of rapes. As you can see I don’t agree with the sex-promoting branch of liberal feminism.
The decision to expose oneself to PIV sex needs to be re-thought societally as the serious and life-changing decision it may be for both parties. I doubt everyone here agrees with me on some of these points – I’m just throwing them out for discussion. I realize there are just criticisms radfems may make as to many of them. For instance, I do think that pragmatically speaking women must know how to protect themselves and learn self-defense and fight back hard, although in a sense that is victim-blaming.
I’ve noticed, too, that they tend to focus on consent with regard to rape and while this is a huge problem most rapes – at least, my own rapes – were not about lack of consent to a sex act; the were about a violent attack, extremely brutal – sometimes involving a weapon, but usually not – and in which a man used his penis and his size and strength as a weapon against me in a completely unexpected and unprovoked attack. My marital rape experiences were just like street crime experiences, except they took place in my own home and I couldn’t get the perp out. The alternative being, if you had an intruder, he might eventually leave you alone and flee out the window.
It seems to me they are trying to re-characterize rape to make it seem unlike the senseless act of heinous violence that it is.
I like your suggestions, V. I think they are very creative and forward-thinking. But, I have a couple of modifications based on my own experiences.
I went to BYU where we had dorms separated by gender. Drinking and alcohol use were forbidden on or off campus – if you were caught, you’d not only be kicked out of the university, but out of the church. So, there was a big deterrent. I never saw alcohol or drugs on campus and I didn’t know anyone who used them. Mormons, also, don’t believe in sex before marriage, which I think would include raping someone, or at least it ought to. They are taught abstinence at a very early age and there is a big emphasis on “remaining chaste” – mostly for girls and women, though. But, boys are taught not to have sexual thoughts and not to masturbate.
Still we had a massive rape problem. A bunch of my friends were raped and I had some close calls in a short space of time. I had a male stalker who got into my dorm area while I was not home – for this I, yes I, was blamed – not reassured of my safety or anything like that. No. Blamed… as always because it’s a culture that has to change and men are a problem no matter how we try to out-think them. In fact, it’s why I left BYU and eventually enrolled at an all-women’s college.
The all-women’s college was a lot safer. I know people say separate is not equal… no, it isn’t, but women are superior academics to men and when we’re not being stalked, raped and systematically picked off by men, we can succeed much easier. Males are holding girls and women back, academically, at every level because they don’t do as well (and we have to slow everything down for them), the represent a major discipline problem and eventually they become violent toward teen girls and women perpetrating sexual assault, harassment, stalking and rape.
Since men overall are not doing as well academically and they represent a crime wave on college campuses, I suggest that they be given their own satellite schools and that they take their rapist-ridden football teams and other sports teams with them.
So, separate schools and universities for girls and boys and men and women.
Boys should be taught abstinence and homosexual desires, rather than heterosexual ones, should be encouraged. The entire way sex education is taught has to change, in fact, because last I remember it was very hetero-normative.
Girls should be taught the dangers of PIV and the potential that boys and men have to be a danger to their physical (and mental) health and safety.
Girls should be taught martial arts and all about guns (history, maintenance, safety and how to properly use them) at around 11 or 12-years of age. By this age girls are mature and physically able to handle guns well and this is also about the age when men step up their physical and sexual aggression toward us.
The laws have to allow for self-defense for women and treat girls and women who are victims of crimes perpetrated against them by men because they are women seriously. (Probably not going to happen in our life-times, but we need this if we are going to be able to defend ourselves without ending up in prison for self-defense.)
In conclusion, we should have longer incarceration times for rapists and we should nullify the Federal ban on the death penalty for rape in the U.S. In other words, bring back the death penalty for rape!
I noticed that the kind of rape he talks about is pretty much just your standard woman goes to man’s house, he doesn’t take no for an answer and it’s her fault for sitting on the bed encouraging him.
I don’t like the idea of staying away from boys and men as if it’s our responsibility. We already do that and it doesn’t help. I know there are men that will cross the street so they don’t come near women, especially at night. That’s what we need to train boys and men to do. Let them worry about coming near us. Although, I don’t think any of this is feasible. We need to change the structure of society.
When I watched the Swedish documentary I saw women gathering outside at night, in large groups. I loved the vibe. Imagine women doing that on a regular basis and not once a year during Take Back the Night? The problem is we’re so busy protecting ourselves every day from individual men that by the time we want to act as a group we’re exhausted. I think that’s what makes me so angry about it all. Women struggle so much every day to AVOID male violence because it’s everywhere.
I like segregated schools for boys and girls. As WotW pointed out, the school system is slowed down because of boys. We need to graduate earlier because we all know we would if we were allowed to go at our own pace.
Education on rape and prostituted women are necessary, absolutely. Boys need to learn from a young age what that’s about. I also see a huge problem with pornography too. I think boys should be taught how addictive it is and how it will kill their relationships with women and cause them many physical problems. They need that early because they’re watching porn by the time they’re 11.
Girls needs to be taught that their sexual satisfaction does NOT take a back seat to PIV. I’ve said this before but we view sex as a male focused act. It’s only sex when it’s PIV, it’s only good if he has an orgasm. etc.
I think that Affirmative Consent needs to go global too. I also want the preponderance of evidence standard to apply to all rape cases involving a male perp.
I agree with the idea of booting a student who is accused of rape but leaving it up to the Uni isn’t a good idea simply because if the student has clout or money or both he will remain among them and rape more women. This is already happening but with long drawn out lawsuits where rich entitled dudes are raping and then saying their rights were violated. ie. the rapist, like the MRA, becomes the victim when they’re not the victim.
I just want a country for women. That’s what I really want. We can have a tiny male population but it must be kept small. Even then I don’t know if it would work because women would start fighting each other over a few men and that would ruin it. Women too need to learn how not to get wrapped up in a man to the point where she’s willing to harm another woman.
When I watch female MRA’s I know they have a vested interest in lying to those men and telling them what they want to hear. These women thrive off male attention and were probably taught that male attention validates them. This has to be taught out of girls. I can say that with total honesty because I was once like those women. I wanted male attention and wouldn’t stop till I got it. Then, when enough men had shown me what they really were I decided to stop latching onto them for my self worth. That’s when I gave up on them. So many women have that same experience at different times. I think that educating women about that, a sisterhood being of the utmost importance, is absolutely necessary if a female focused society is to function properly.
You have lots of great ideas here, but my favorite is that me should be trained – or rather re-trained – to avoid women especially under circumstances in which they might be perceived as a threat.
Men from older generations, specifically, the WWII and baby boomer generations, still adhere to this unwritten rule of polite social conduct pretty well.
Also, in German culture, at least in the more northern region where I spent most of my time it is socially unacceptable for men to approach women or “make the first move.”
This is a social change that could be implemented – or really, I think, re-implemented.
Sorry, that last point is # 10. Also in #4, societies should take a look at THEIR promotion…
I just had another memory:
When I was in high school, we had one class that was all girls. I remember that our teacher, who was a nun, tried to warn us about sexual harassment. She told us a hypothetical story about being asked out to dinner the by boss and how we should always decline, that we wouldn’t be lying if we said we had something to do that night, even if the “something” was just to wash our hair.
If we had more classes with wise, women teachers like her and all-girl classrooms, these things could be more easily discussed and girls could perhaps be better prepared for “the minefield.”
@WOOW, what can I say about your experience in an educational environment with drinking and PIV non-marital sex discouraged, where rape was nevertheless widespread. I suppose it means separate schools entirely are a better answer as you say.
Looking at our ideas for “fixes” for hook-up college culture rape, I’m aware that they are immediate fixes, transitional fixes, white middle-class fixes, and in a way, experimental fixes. I’m talking about short-range, probably ultimately ineffective ways of looking at the problem. I’m saying, here we are today with some obvious imbalances that can be relatively easily corrected. Under the guise of freedom and equality, our societies have encouraged college women to put themselves in harms’ way in every conceivable manner. The immediate overall fix is to remove women from the increase in sexual access we as patriarchal western societies have encouraged, while also continuing to increase women’s access to education and personal freedom.
It could be argued that we’re seeing a classic strategy of patriarchy here. It will bend a little, bring in a class of exceptional, usually white first-world women (while loading them up with heavy stones in their pockets to make sure they don’t do too well), and allow education for women because the pressure has become too intense and they have to.
But patriarchy never gives in one place without taking in another. The result is always some kind of status quo ante. There’s always a covert re-balancing, and we as women don’t catch on to it for a while. This re-balancing here seems to be, ok, you women can get your degrees, you’ve given us no choice with your incessant lawsuits, but we’re going to increase unfettered sexual access to you during that process, with all its attendant dangers. You won’t get your degrees without paying doubly for them, not just with tuition, but with your bodies; so, date rape, “consensual” intoxicated PIV sex, co-ed dorms, pressure to party.
Seeing it now, we can struggle to preserve our gains in accessing education, while struggling to limit (sometimes subtly) coerced sexual access. We can apply a number of counterstrategies such as our suggestions here. We have to talk about these things, but we also have to keep our eyes on the ball. The ball is liberation, not a constant juggling act. That means the patriarchy has to be finally forced to give way on all strategies that maintain our subjugation as a class.
Why are these fixes temporary and experimental? Well, we’re in new territory, transitional territory. Many men and women retain traditional attitudes that the subordination of women is “natural”. Many others have moved on from that but don’t know how to stop the subordination. We may see obvious needs and try to re-balance and give our attempts some time, but at some point we have to assess whether they’re working. In the case of the immediate fixes for college campus rape, the fixes may work badly, work only for a while, bring out the need for more fixes, and so on. They are experimental – we are involved in a process.
As we also agree, the very fact that date rape and other problems of college women is getting so much attention is a red flag. Our energies are limited; we mustn’t allow ourselves to be too distracted by this one part of the problem MRAs want to talk about. As I said above, rape is a much larger problem involving all women in the world.
So I support these counterstrategies and this struggle, but I have to add that we have to always remember the job of of getting rid of the main patriarchal pressure point once and for all; the universal pressure on women to accept being the servant class.
My BYU experience demonstrates what the problem is and it isn’t party or party-girls or party-boys on campus. The problem is simply men. It’s a special problem if those men have an overblown sense of self-entitlement toward women and feel they have a literally God-given right to hurt us.
Whether it’s a college campus, an employer or whatever, they need to take stalking and rape seriously, too. One of the men following me around on campus was rumored to be a convicted rapist. Of course, I don’t doubt that he was.
So, take away booze, drugs and “hook-up” culture (which is a term unheard of at that time, as far as I know, anyway) and you still have a massive rape problem because you have massive numbers of men, a much larger percentage of than anyone driving this crazy train wants to admit, who are rapists.
This an excellent, well-thought out analysis. You are absolutely right when you say: “But patriarchy never gives in one place without taking in another.”
It’s always a deal with the devil: Sure, you ladies can work outside the home, but you’ll only earn 30% of what men make (where I live) and we’ll fire you if you out-perform the men (happened to me). And, if you’re in sales and you want the good leads, you’ll have to blow the sales manager. Etc., etc.,
The only way to cope is to stay as far away from men, as possible, because there is no getting ahead whenever they’re involved, only degrees of pain and degradation.
Some good news, presented for your amusement:
MRA poster child, War Machine, who beat his girlfriend nearly to death recently, tried (unsuccessfully) to commit hari-kari inside his jail cell. Oh, the poor, poor menz, they are so suicidal and life is so hard for men when they end up in jail after raping and beating a woman to the brink of death for saying, “No.”
MRAs love writing little notes to people, so he left a suicide note in which he blames an anti-male society for all his problems. “Oooooh, the poor, poor menz and blast those dastardly feminists who say nasty, hateful things about rapists and misogynist killers – like “they oughta be in jail!”:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/cage-fighter-war-machine-blames-anti-male-society-for-his-domestic-violence-in-suicide-note/comments/#disqus
Oh, I forgot the disclaimer. War Machine isn’t *really* an MRA, nowhere in his note does he state, “I’m an MRA,” and he has no association whatsoever with AVfM.
There are plenty of sites online regarding the massive, tightly constructed bars in the cage the Mormon Church constructs for each believing woman to ensure her subordination. I won’t try to repeat them as I’m not well-enough informed.
But I think you have answered very clearly the question of why alcohol and premarital sex restrictions wouldn’t much change the rape rate in Mormon educational institutions, WOOW. The men appear to have been taught from an early age that they are entitled to a woman’s sexual services, that men control women at all times, that women only have access to God through men, and that women who don’t act modestly and arouse male lust are bad women. The social stigma on a girl reporting a rape, which will ruin the boy eternally, must be incredible, and also the pressure on the school to cover it up.
There are so many different ways the patriarchy does its work. Benevolent sexism, protectionism, eternal marriages, pornography, prostitution, religion, employment discrimination, social stigma, media objectification, the violating male gaze, violence; psychology, literature, co-ed dorms; no aspect of life is untouched or uncontrolled by men and this is a worldwide crisis.
The duct-tape over her mouth. Across the centuries. Normalization of the crisis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture
V.,
I really consider the Mormon construct a microcosm of patriarchy. If you want to see what it looks like, totally unchecked, take a hard look at the Mormons, including the Fundamentalists who openly (notice I say “openly” as opposed to secretly) practice polygamy.